Collection
Reference and Remembering
Episodic memory enables us to consciously ‘relive’ experienced events from our past. You might remember making coffee this morning and sensorily recall what it was like to hear the kettle reach a boil or to smell the coffee grounds. Success in this activity requires that there be a certain relationship between your present act of remembering and the past event in question. First, something must ‘fix’ or determine that your memory is about that particular event, rather than, say, a similar event the previous morning. Second, the memory must be suitably accurate. By analogy, success in uttering ‘This is blue’ requires, for its evaluability, that ‘This’ refers to a particular object and, for its truth, that the predicate accurately characterises the referred-to object. Though these observations are simple, what we might call the reference-fixing and accuracy conditions of episodic remembering remain obscure. The thriving work on memory in philosophy and the sciences strongly suggests that continued progress requires more attention—and new approaches—to these matters. Since this requires expertise in both memory and in reference and singular thought, new conversations must be started. The principal aim of the proposed topical collection is to prompt such conversations about the complex and multi-faceted relationship between reference, singular thought, and remembering by bringing researchers specializing on these topics within one forum for the first time.
We hereby invite contributions for the Synthese topical collection, ‘Reference and Remembering’. Potential topics for contributions include but are not limited to:
- How the subject matter or reference of episodic memories is determined
- Memory and mental files
- Memory and singular thought
- Memory demonstratives
- Event segmentation and the individuation of events in episodic memory
- Memory and immunity to error through misidentification
- The intentional objects of remembering
- Remembering (the objects of) hallucination/dreams
- Accuracy conditions in episodic remembering
- Reference and the semantics of memory reports
The deadline for manuscript submissions is October 1st, 2023. Only original articles will be considered. Acceptance of all submissions requires positive evaluation from two reviewers. Word limits and other guidance conform to the journal’s general policies.
Submissions are to be made via: editorialmanager.
For further information, please contact the lead guest editor,James Openshaw
Editors
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James Openshaw
I joined the university in November 2022 as a postdoctoral researcher on project P3 of the DFG research group 'Constructing Scenarios of the Past' (FOR 2812). I'm also a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Centre for Philosophy of Memory (Université Grenoble Alpes), where I lead the EU-funded Remembering Objects (2021–24) project.
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Kourken Michaelian
My research is mainly in the philosophy of memory. In opposition to the causal theory, according to which remembering an event requires an appropriate causal connection with an earlier experience of the remembered event, I have defended a simulation theory, according to which remembering an event does not require such a causal connection and is, instead, simply a matter of imagining it.
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Denis Perrin
I am professor of philosophy of mind and language at the Université Grenoble Alpes. In philosophy of mind, my main focus is on memory, specifically on the continuism-discontinuism debate about mental time travel, the phenomenology of episodic memory, the particularity of content in episodic memory, episodic memory and IEM, and the relationship between procedural and episodic memory.
